[solved] Destroy zfs snapshots

[Elleni]

I have a question on zfs and thought as many use zfs here and some may have good knowledge on zfs maybe someone has an easy answer for me. I know that there is the -r switch for destroying snapshots including its children, meaning the following snapshots. What I’d like to know, if there is an easy way to delete a snapshot and with it every snapshot taken before the one easily?


I have seen that it is not possible to use * for ex. for deleting all snapshots named vm-disk-xy@snapshot2011* for removing vm-disk-xy@snapshot2011[1-31_hhmm] so right now I am issuing a destroy command for each individual dayly snapshot - so about 30 destroy commands per vm to delete a months snapshots. Is there a switch or rexexp. that could be used to ease my life ?

 

[fiona]

Hi,
the man page is your friend man zfs (or man zfs-destroy if you're running a new enough version):

zfs destroy [-Rdnprv] filesystem|volume@snap[%snap[,snap[%snap]]]...
...
       An inclusive range of snapshots may be specified by separating the first and last snapshots with a percent sign.  The first and/or last snapshots may be left blank, in which case the filesystem's oldest or newest snapshot
       will be implied.
...

meaning you can use zfs destory dataset@%last_destroyed_snap to clear all older ones and the one specified.

 

[Elleni]

Perfect. Did not find that info in man myself, thats why I want to warmly thank you for providing me this very useful information.